Court Workers

County supervisors approved a 4.3% pay raise for all county court workers this week, bringing them into line with 15,000 other county workers. The raise covers about 900 court employees with a wide variety of salaries. Other county workers, most of whom are covered in a two-year contract, already had been scheduled to receive the 4.3% increase. "This is intended to track with our other employees," said Russ Patton, the county's personnel director. The pay hikes will be retroactive to last

Arnella Sims already has witnessed the effects of broad cuts to the Los Angeles County court system: The lines in the courthouses are getting longer; the calls from the public angrier. And Sims -- who has worked as a court reporter for 37 years -- knows things could get much worse. In the coming months, the Los Angeles County Superior Court is to enact a cost-cutting plan that includes the complete closure of eight regional courthouses, consolidations of court services and layoffs of hundreds of court employees.

Three Los Angeles Superior Court workers were suspended and three others resigned after they were implicated in a probe of missing funds at the fictitious business names department, officials said Tuesday. About $200 had been disappearing each day from cash registers in the department, which manages applications for doing business under a certain name, said Executive Officer Frank Zolin. Five other department employees have been transferred to other posts, he said.

November 14, 2012 | By Andrew Blankstein and Matt Stevens, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles County court officials announced sweeping cuts in the judicial system Wednesday, including the closure of all courtrooms in 10 regional courthouses. The cuts are expected to delay some trials, cause longer lines and result in more layoffs, but officials said it was the only option for closing a shortfall of $50 million to $80 million in the court budget. Courtrooms will be shuttered in such landmark courthouses as Beverly Hills, West Los Angeles, Malibu, Avalon, Huntington Park, Whittier, Pomona and San Pedro.

Judges and court workers began a series of nationwide strikes Thursday after a judge and a congressman were murdered, apparently by drug traffickers. In Medellin, where the judge was killed, federal justices walked off the job indefinitely until they receive more protection. It is the third time that judges have gone on strike in the last three months to protest assassinations.

U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie said Friday he will ask for an official investigation of whether social contacts between a court stenographer and a defense lawyer in the recently completed Enrique Camarena murder trial may have resulted in jury tampering. Rafeedie made the announcement after lawyer Martin R. Stolar of New York refused to answer questions about whether he had any "social contacts" with stenographer Julie A. Churchill during the trial.

November 14, 2012 | By Andrew Blankstein and Matt Stevens, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles County court officials announced sweeping cuts in the judicial system Wednesday, including the closure of all courtrooms in 10 regional courthouses. The cuts are expected to delay some trials, cause longer lines and result in more layoffs, but officials said it was the only option for closing a shortfall of $50 million to $80 million in the court budget. Courtrooms will be shuttered in such landmark courthouses as Beverly Hills, West Los Angeles, Malibu, Avalon, Huntington Park, Whittier, Pomona and San Pedro.

About 20,000 judges and court employees in Colombia extended a general strike into a second day to protest the assassination of a leftist leader, Jaime Pardo Leal. The nation's leading Communist, Pardo was president of the Patriotic Union, a party set up by leftist guerrillas under a peace plan arranged with the government three years ago. Right-wing death squads have been blamed for the killing of 460 party members.

Arnella Sims already has witnessed the effects of broad cuts to the Los Angeles County court system: The lines in the courthouses are getting longer; the calls from the public angrier. And Sims -- who has worked as a court reporter for 37 years -- knows things could get much worse. In the coming months, the Los Angeles County Superior Court is to enact a cost-cutting plan that includes the complete closure of eight regional courthouses, consolidations of court services and layoffs of hundreds of court employees.

State investigators have discovered small piles of hazardous asbestos debris in the crawl spaces between all 19 floors of the downtown Criminal Courts Building and have closed those areas to maintenance workers. Investigators have found no evidence, however, to indicate that the building's 1,400 office workers are threatened by the cancer-causing asbestos fibers, a spokesman for Cal/OSHA, the state job safety agency, said Tuesday.

A Pasadena employer that installed a hidden camera in an employee office did not invade the workers' privacy because the camera was turned on only when the workers were away, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday. The state high court decision left privacy rights intact for employees in the workplace, but made it possible for courts to throw out lawsuits before trial if surveillance was limited and conducted for legitimate purposes. Justice Marvin R.

Whistle-blowers in state government received protection Thursday from the California Supreme Court in a case in which a low-level employee reported that her superior had violated a regulation she was supposed to enforce. The state high court gave whistle-blowers who suffer retaliation the right to sue for hefty damages in court even if they lose their case before a civil service board.

To the surprise of civil rights advocates, the Supreme Court on Tuesday strengthened workplace anti-discrimination laws, ruling that employees who say they were punished for complaining of bias can sue for damages. In a pair of decisions, the court concluded that claims of retaliation were covered by long-standing civil rights laws, even though this kind of discrimination was not mentioned specifically in the statutes.

Workers gained a powerful weapon Wednesday by winning the right to sue employers when their retirement plans are mismanaged, raising the possibility of lawsuits over other worker-fund matters as well. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that workers could sue employers to recover losses when their 401(k) accounts were not handled in their best interests.

Judges are planning to shut down Los Angeles County courts for as many as eight days over the next three months and send workers home without pay to reduce an $8.2-million budget deficit, officials said Thursday. "This is not something that we want to do," said Presiding Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert A. Dukes, who, along with the court's executive officer and its 565 judges and commissioners, is exempt from the furloughs.

Through transfers, attrition and other belt-tightening measures, the Los Angeles Superior Court has trimmed an expected layoff of 150 permanent workers by about half, a court spokesman said Monday. Allan Parachini said only 77 full-time, permanent court personnel were laid off at the beginning of this month to help cover a $57-million deficit for the current budget year. Just two months ago, court officials anticipated eliminating 150 such positions, effective Nov. 1.

A civil lawyer and a veteran Superior Court clerk were accused Wednesday of submitting false documents in a personal-injury lawsuit after the lawyer failed to follow court procedure. The district attorney's office filed felony charges against Roland Ramez Salameh, 43, a specialist in personal-injury law, and Linda Lucille Brierley, 41, a court clerk for 11 years. Both live in Orange. "This is a real breach of what each of their professions expect of them," said Deputy Dist. Atty.

Deputy Los Angeles County Counsel Lester J. Tolnai failed Thursday to persuade Superior Court Judge Kurt J. Lewin that 190 of the county's courtroom clerks should work next Monday, when the county's more than 300 state courts will be closed in observance of Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Lewin ruled that a new state law establishing a dozen uniform holidays a year in all 58 counties for California "officers and employees of the courts" is "crystal clear."

U.S. Forest Service employee Terry Lynn Barton pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges that she deliberately set the largest wildfire in Colorado history. A federal judge set bail for Barton with several stipulations. His ruling came after a 3 1/2-hour hearing in which prosecutors outlined their case against the 18-year Forest Service veteran. Prosecutors said Thursday that Barton lied about accidentally starting the fire after burning a letter from her estranged husband.

A group of Burmese refugees won a landmark victory Tuesday when a Los Angeles judge ruled that Unocal Corp. could be tried for human rights violations, including forced labor, that allegedly occurred during construction of a $1.2-billion natural gas pipeline in Myanmar. Superior Court Judge Victoria Gerrard Chaney's ruling means that if the case goes to trial in September as scheduled, Unocal would become the first U.S.